ACA Conference in Cincinnati: Day One

Yesterday was Day One of my American Counseling Association conference experience and it has led me to notice that whenever I dish up my plate, it always seems there’s a little food that falls off the edges. My grandmother used to say my eyes were bigger than my stomach, but that’s silly because I’ve looked at my stomach; if my eyes really were bigger, I’d look like a brother from another planet. Obviously, this is a metaphor.

The point is that I always try to fit too much material into my presentations. Yesterday I presented a 6 hour “Learning Institute” titled, “Counseling Challenging Teenagers.” It was a very nice experience with about 20 participants who care enough about working with teenagers to show up in Cincinnati 2 days before the conference actually starts for a spendy workshop. I was impressed with the participants and the questions and the dedication to learning and serving teenagers. Very cool.

However, not surprisingly, because as Robert Frost would undoubtedly contend, my reach consistently exceeds my grasp, I didn’t quite fit every part of the workshop content into the workshop . . . which brings me to the purpose of this post . . . which is to describe my next two postings . . . which will be on alternative to suicide and neodissociation as a suicide intervention . . . which were the two parts of the workshop that exceeded my grasp.

Highlights of Day One: The man who drove 18 hours from Maryland to attend (and managed to mostly stay awake); the woman who helped with the workshop as a volunteer and then was super-giddy about getting me to take a photo of her with Bob Wubbolding (and then, I think to humor me, acted excited to include me in an additional photo with the two of them); finding a Starbucks, Panera Bread, and Chipotle within blocks of the Convention Center.